Mexico City mayor: ‘I want to be president’

Mancera announces he'll be a candidate in 2018

The ink has barely dried on the ballots of the mid-term elections but that hasn’t stopped the announcement of candidates for the next round in 2018.

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Two days after former first lady Margarita Zavala announced her own bid for the presidency, Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said he too was standing for president in 2018.

“Yes, I want to be president,” the 49-year-old lawyer told Carlos Marín on Milenio Television yesterday, while making it clear that his priority remains Mexico City.

Mancera was elected mayor in 2012 under a coalition headed by the Democratic Revolution Party. But he did not discount the possibility of running for president as an independent candidate, a possibility made more credible after six independent candidates won seats in the June 7 elections, including the governor of Neuvo León.

Mancera said he is not currently affiliated with any political party.

In addition to Zavala, whose husband Felipe Calderón was National Action Party president from 2006 to 2012, Morena leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador has also declared his intention to run.